Living in a small mountain village just outside of Tokyo, I grow a crop of indigo every year and process the leaves into dye using traditional methods. I also breed silk moths, raise the silkworms and then reel/spin the silk from the cocoons. The silk is then dyed with natural dyes and finally woven on traditional Japanese looms.
I run several ten-day live-in workshops a year at the old farmhouse here in Japan focusing on the Japanese use of indigo.
Contact me for information.

Monday, 20 March 2017

Japanese Indigo Dyed Fireman Jackets.

There is a museum in Tokyo dedicated to Japanese fire fighting.

There is a collection of old fire brigade uniforms on display so I went for a few hours to take a look.

The museum was quite lively. There were plenty of mothers there with their young ones who seemed to aspire to be fire fighters. There is a fire station in the building so there were plenty of brave, duty loving, serious looking Japanese in the building along with a few non-Japanese hunky fire fighter looking tourists who would be very interested in the long history fire fighting in Tokyo.

There were millions of people living in this city for five hundred years plus. The city was crowded and made of wood. One of the fire brigades main jobs was to tear down buildings quickly to create a fire break. (Interesting aside...There was a small city upstream where large boats owned by the wealthy held all the materials to rebuild buildings after fires or buildings being torn down as a fire break. )

As with all Japanese museums there was a magnificent miniature recreation model. This time of a section a Tokyo with a fire watch tower and fire fighters tearing the clay tiles off a roof before collapsing the building to make the fire break. (I love Japan on museum days.)

But my interest this day was the indigo dyed work jackets. What was the spirit they were wore in?

I have nine guests at the farmhouse from April 1st here to design and indigo dye these jackets for themselves. It is time to get out of the cave of winter hibernation and get in the work mode again.

Japan is beautiful in May. I had a few cancellations in a regular indigo workshop. If you are up to a ten-day workshop here at the farmhouse with a lot of indigo dyeing, good food and cultural activities we will spoil you & take care of you well. Drop me a line at japanesetextileworkshops@gmail.com

The jackets on display were typically masculine and bold.

Fire fighters were always gorgeously tattooed. He is carrying a mattoi with his brigades insignia design on the top. These are made of white painted leather. They are amazing when every man holds one and they do a choreographed uber tough guy parade dance.

There was a healthy collection of these matoi on display.

Here is a sample design pattern for the hanten jackets. The amount of stripes and their position signifies rank.

6 comments:

Oh I wish, a stay making and using indigo would be wonderful, would be nice to knock off a few years. Like the sound of the museum, all the things we didn't do on our visits to Japan, but then we did some great things too.

How interesting the idea of tearing down some houses to make a fire break and being already organised to rebuild those houses. It sounds bizarre but makes sense. A bit like our 'back burning' of the bush in Aust often done in winter in preparation for the bushfire season. Love those photos of the firefighters and their beautiful jackets..Claudia

The old photos are wonderful, the clothing is great. They are tough looking guys. Have fun with the April hanten workshop. I'm just finishing my third handwoven hanten, for the conference fashion show.

About Me

My home is in a vertical mountain village in Fujino just outside of Tokyo. It is here, in my 150 year old silk farming house I hold classes and workshops related to Japanese textiles. Our village shrine dates back 650 years. I’ve dug up dozens of 5000-year-old Jomon-era pottery shards near by. Twenty-one houses are scattered and perched on ledges along a narrow twisting road. Most of the somewhat ramshackle farmhouses designed for silk farming cling poetically to the deep shadows of afternoon. The land reached by the sun was either too steep to build on or was used to grow enough food to survive. From the front of my house I can see well-tended tea terraces ascending impossibly upward. Climb up the hillside and from the queues of tea you can survey my old farmhouse and on extra clear days even spy a self-conscious Mt Fuji.